Source editions

Poems on various subjects: with introductory remarks on the present state of science
and literature in France. London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.

Biographical note

Helen Maria Williams was born in London, the daughter of Charles Williams (d. 1762), secretary to the island of Minorca, and his second wife Helen, née Hay (1730-1812).
After her father's death, she was brought up (with a sister and a step-sister) by
her mother in Berwick-upon-Tweed. In 1781 the family returned to London where Williams
was encouraged to write by their minister, the writer Andrew Kippis. Her first poem, Edwin and Eltruda, appeared in 1782, which was followed by several other pieces. In 1786, her two-volume
collection Poems was published, which included An American Tale, To Sensibility, Peru, and Euphelia. Williams came into contact with fellow writers, including Samuel Johnson and the Warton brothers, and corresponded with Anna Seward. In the late 1780s, Williams
joined fellow dissenting writers such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld in the abolitionist cause, to which she contributed her On the Bill which was Passed in England for Regulating the Slave-Trade (1788). Williams was enthusiastic about the French Revolution, which had a profound
impact on her personal and literary life. She first visited Paris in 1790 and quickly
became a chronicler of the crisis in France for a British audience. Her Letters from France (1790-6) provide an eye-witness account of the revolutionary struggles and the reign
of terror and its aftermath. Williams' sister Cecilia married a Frenchman, Martin
A. Coquerel, in 1794 and settled in Paris. Soon after, Williams went into exile in
Switzerland for six months to avoid prosecution. She came under attack by some writers
for her pro-revolutionary views and rumours about an affair with a divorced Englishman
living in Paris. In 1798 her sister Cecilia died, and Williams became adoptive mother
of her nephews Athanase and Charles. After the peace of Amiens in 1801, Williams entertained
the French and British literary elite in her salon in Paris for many years. In 1810,
she began translating the works of German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, which
resulted in a long friendship with v. Humboldt. Williams was naturalized as a French
citizen in 1817. A final collection of her Poems on Various Subjects was published in 1823. She died in Paris in 1827.

Mitchell, Robert Edward. 'The Soul That Dreams It Shares the Power It Feels So Well': The Politics of Sympathy
in the Abolitionist Verse of Williams and Yearsley. Romanticism on the Net: An Electronic Journal Devoted to Romantic Studies 29-30, 2003. Web. 13 Sep. 2016. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ron/2003-n29-30-ron695/007719ar/.